Plenty to ponder for Mancini

Soccer:Roberto Mancini was today facing up to one of the biggest headaches of his Manchester City career ahead of the club's do-or-die Champions League clash with Ajax. Mancini has already admitted City need "a miracle" to salvage their Group D campaign after taking just one point from their opening three games.

But if God really does help those who help themselves then not even divine intervention will be enough for Mancini’s men judging by last night’s uninspiring goalless Premier League draw at West Ham.

And Lady Luck was not exactly smiling on City going into Tuesday’s revenge mission against Ajax at the Etihad, with Joleon Lescott and James Milner set to miss out with respective injuries picked up in training and during yesterday’s warm-up.

The champions then blew the chance to join Manchester United at the top of the table after failing to score in a game for the first time in seven months. However, it was no freak result, with City having struck just four times in their previous three games.

Prior to that, their problems were at the other end of the pitch, their defence failing to keep a clean sheet in their opening 10 matches. After watching his side produce back-to-back shutouts for the first time this season, the City boss admitted the pendulum had swung too far the other way.

“Maybe we conceded a lot of goals when we started the season,” he said. “Now, we’ve improved our defensive phase but we need to start scoring like last year and I think we need to improve this offensive phase. We need to work for this.”

Midfielder Samir Nasri added on the club’s official website, www.mcfc.co.uk: “We should have done something better. We missed so many chances and when you miss these kinds of chances, you cannot expect to win the game. So we have to improve.”

City’s performances are a far cry from 12 months ago, when they were scoring goals for fun against even their fiercest rivals. Their cause has not been helped by Mancini’s tinkering, which went awry again yesterday 10 days after his three-at-the-back experiment at the Amsterdam ArenA.

The decision to start with Carlos Tevez, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli in the same XI for the first time failed just as spectacularly, the latter extending his miserable run in front of goal. It could have been even worse for the visitors had Kevin Nolan not seen a well-taken early goal controversially ruled out for offside.